Sludge forum finally on Menifee council's schedule

Once and for all, Menifee city officials hope to quell concerns regarding the decades-long application of biosolids -- better known as sludge -- to farmlands across with a public forum in late February.

Acting City Manager Rob Johnson announced the forum -- originally put on the city’s to-do list last May -- at Wednesday’s City Council meeting. Staff members and elected officials at City Hall hope the meeting will inform residents about an issue that has lurked in Menifee’s background since its incorporation in October 2008.

“This is an important issue in the community,” Mayor Scott Mann said. “We’re going to get our hands around the problem.”

That problem dates back to the legal dumping of sludge through 2001, when farmers across Southwest County were paid to use the material -- a mixture of human, household and industrial wastes treated at a sewage plant -- as a fertilizer on lands that a growing number of residents fear may have been developed during the housing boom.

With a number of scientists and environmental experts reporting a correlation between sewage sludge and other contaminants and various cancers, birth defects and other health problems, Riverside County banned Class B sludge in 2001 and began regulating the use of Class A sludge -- which is treated to remove 99.9 percent of infectious agents -- in 2004.

Residents’ concerns, however, persist. The issue has been raised at numerous council meetings in the last year.

“There are homes off of La Ladera that people have walked away from,” Katie Minnear said while addressing the council Wednesday. “People can’t live in them due to health issues. … I think we need to take it seriously. I’m looking forward to having this forum. I think you guys need to step up and do the right thing and see what goes on with people and the severity of the illnesses.”

Councilman Tom Fuhrman has certainly made an issue out of sludge in the last week.

After originally voting to approve an Audie Murphy Ranch tract map at a December meeting, he implored the council to reconsider its vote on a tract near the Salt Creek conservation area -- which borders La Ladera -- that Fuhrman said he believes could have been contaminated during the dredging of Canyon Lake and “sludging” upstream of the creek in all directions.

Although Fuhrman withdrew his move for reconsideration Wednesday -- Mann sais approval of those maps was a ministerial step because the county approved the project as a whole before Menifee’s incorporation -- a review of the thousand-page environmental report of the Audie Murphy land did not resolve Furhman's suspicions that off-site sources may have contaminated the area.

The report, Fuhrman said, was based largely on signed affidavits from the previous owners -- war hero Audie Murphy, comedian Bob Hope, Chevron Land and Development Co. and Caprock -- and observations of soil conditions.

“My question is: Since there has been no surface testing, is the land around Salt Creek safe and suitable for residential use without proper testing?” Fuhrman asked. “I’m looking out for the health and welfare of the citizens of Menifee. I’m looking for something positive to come out of the sludge forum that we are going to have in February.”